48a: Rocinante rider (QUIXOTE). Don Quixote's horse. I didn't know this, but once I had the Q it was an easy guess. And QUIXOTE is a great fill.

50a: Portrayer of Dr. Frank-N-Furter in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (TIM CURRY). Love it. I would have loved to be at the meeting where they first pitched the script to him. I've posted a link to this video before (June 19 - Doug Peterson), when the answer was RIFFRAFF, but I'll include it here as well.

35a: Singer of the Oscar-nominated song "May It Be" (ENYA). I think she's won all the Oscars for song. My resource for this claim is crossword puzzles. Actually, maybe ELTON JOHN won one.

36a: "Cheers!" alternative (SKOAL).

41a: Descendant of Jacob (ISRAELITE). Nice, vowelly word.

45a: Vain sorts (EGOTISTS). This has been showing up more frequently than I would expect, given its length.

59a: Bank problem (EROSION). River bank, not savings bank.

62a: Canaries, e.g. (ISLANDS).

6d: Peace pipes (CALUMETS). It took a bit to remember the middle vowel, but I've definitely seen this before.

9d: Morgan, for one (EQUINE).

10d: Billi-bi ingredient (MUSSELS). I have never heard of billi-bi, which is a soup made from mussel stock and cream. Still, there weren't many words that could fit here. And, it sounds good; now I'm going to have to find some to try.

12d: Inventor who gave skyscrapers a boost (ELISHA OTIS). I knew the Otis part immediately, but couldn't remember the first name of this elevator brake inventor. My first instinct was Jeremiah, but it didn't fit. At least I was on the biblical track.

22d: Mushroom popular in Asian cuisine (ENOKI). I spelled this ENAKI originally, confusing it with SHIITAKE.

26d: Virginia McKenna movie role of 1966 (JOY ADAMSON). From "Born Free". It's nice to see a reference to this film that's not ELSA.

27d: Breakout producer (ATARI). Breakout is like solitaire pong.

29d: Russian import, briefly (STOLI). Short for Stolichnaya, the vodka.

31d: Key name (LARGO). Brings to mind the Beach Boys song "Kokomo". Here's a version you may not remember.

37d: Vientiane natives (LAOTIANS). I got this right away, but you gotta admit it's a weird-looking word.

47d: Part of Wonder Woman's getup (TIARA).

53d: Last name in do-it-yourself home improvement (VILA). Of the original "This Old House".

55d: Lille's department (NORD). Well, I know it's French for "north", so I guess it makes sense that it's the name of a department.

Suns of Bitches:

There were several answers in this puzzle that I didn't know, but it still filled in surprisingly quickly for me, with the northeast corner the last to fall. Alas, I had an error in the southwest at the crossing of 61a: Ornamental flower (LANTANA) and 49d: "Cat People" woman (IRENA). I didn't know either, and guessed LANTANE/IRENE. This deserves the "guess-the-vowel" tag.

Others that I did not know, but that fell without to much hurly-burly:

28a: Tiffany jewelry designer Peretti (ELSA).

38a: ___ Mesa (San Diego border crossing) (OTAY). If this had been a Buckwheat clue, I'd have gotten it easily.

58a: Algonquian spirit (MANITOU).

2d: "On Eagles' Wings" author Weizman (EZER).

4d: Endymion's kingdom, in Greek myth (ELIS). I have no idea what this clue is about. I guess ELIS is a mythical kingdom. I'm not totally oblivious to Greek mythology, but I've never heard of it.

8d: Clark of country music (TERRI). The only Clark that came to mind was PETULA, and that didn't fit. I know very little about country music, and nothing about recent country music.

14d: Simchat ___ (Shemini Atzereth follower) (TORAH). I didn't even know what we were looking for here, except that it was probably a Jewish word. From Wikipedia:

On the Hebrew calendar, the holiday of Sukkot in the autumn (mid to late October) is immediately followed by the holiday of Shemini Atzeret. In Orthodox and Conservative communities outside Israel, Shemini Atzeret is a two-day holiday and the Simchat Torah festivities are observed on the second day. The first day is referred to as "Shemini Atzeret" and the second day as "Simchat Torah," although both days are officially Shemini Atzeret according to Halakha, and this is reflected in the liturgy.

In Israel and in Reform congregations both in Israel and the Diaspora, Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah are celebrated on the same day.

Overall, this is the kind of Weekend Warrior I like. Plenty of great, evocative fill; plenty of tough answers, but mostly discernable from crossings. My only complaint is the LANTANA/IRENA cross, which I found to be a little nasty.

This is getting weird. On Wednesday I mention a high concentration of a single letter in my comment, then along comes Thursday with all the I's. On Thursday, I mention a cedilla in one of my comments, and along comes CEDILLA in the Friday puzzle. No, I didn't look ahead, but if something from this comment shows up in Monday's puzzle, I'm going to really be scratching my head.

Remember the Beagle winning Westminster this year? That's around when this puzzle was written. The commercials for the show used "I'm Too Sexy" excerpts and I got a kick out of those lyrics being the background music for the dogs prancing around in the ads. So I thought it would be a cool entry to build a puzzle around.

Sorry about the Lantana/Irena. Agreed that was a tough one. Glad you liked the rest of it though. Thanks for the comments!

About Me

I'm a software engineer from New Hampshire who used to blog the NY Sun puzzle. Now it's gone, but the blog's still here. I'm not interested in doing a daily blog of other puzzles... there's enough of those already. But maybe if I post a few original puzzles now and again, enough people will come by that remember (or want to know) how good the Sun puzzles were and will SIGN UP HERE to get them going again.